The Biggest Mistake of My Life

Have you ever had a gut feeling that you chose to ignore but later really regretted? That’s the situation with me and my ex Janine. Now this might not be the most interesting story you’ve ever read here, but it is the most f*cked up situation ever in my life. Here goes nothin…..

I met Janine during a bar crawl with some of my friends. A friend of mine got hooked up with a friend of hers, so we ended up hanging out the whole night. Janine was cool, but I wasn’t really into her like that. After we talked for a long time, I found that she was a really cool girl and into a lot of the same interests as me. She invited me on a hike the next day and I accepted. We had a great time on the hike and went for dinner and drinks the following night. Before long, we were in a committed relationship and it was great.

When we first started dating Janine told me that she was still good friends with her ex. She said that the reason they broke up was because he was questioning his sexuality and had since come out as gay. I felt like I had no right or reason to question their relationship, so I didn’t.

I’m going to skip over the details of the next year and get to the god part. one night, Janine and I were at my place watching a movie. We usually went out, but she had said that she felt like a night in, so I went along with it. Janine went out to her car to grab her overnight bag. She came back in and went straight to the kitchen, which was adjacent to the living room. Out of nowhere, my door busts open and the big burly guy charges in and grabs me by my shirt. He starts yelling and trying to swing on me. I fought him back thinking that he was an intruder, and I yelled for Janine to get out and call 9-1-1. But she just stood there and watched. This guy kept yelling that if i wanted to hit someone, I could hit him, he told me to fight like a man instead of hitting a women like a b!tch. I was so confused that I actually paused trying to figure out what he meant, and that’s when he hit me square in my face. There was blood everywhere and I knew I was injured bad. The guy took off and Janine went with him, arm in arm. I called the police and they went over to Janine’s. According to her story, I had been abusing her and forcing her to stay in a relationship with me. She had been beat, sexually assaulted, and mentally and verbally abused by a psycho and her ex whom she had recently rekindled a romance with decided to take matters into his own hands and get her out. So, as it turns out, the ex wasn’t gay but had just dumped her but kept her around as a f*@k buddy. She concocted the story about me abusing her as a way to get him to feel sorry for her and to win him back. Her story quickly fell apart and it all came out the next day that she had been lying to everyone. The psycho ex wasn’t so crazy after-all and he called with the deepest of apologies and offered to cover the costs of any medical or repair bills and then some. Plus, he invited me out for a beer. We ended up comparing stories and found out just how crazy and desperate this girl was. I dropped the charges against him and was just glad that Janine was out of my life for good. I heard from here two weeks ago in a text message that read, “do you think we could get together and talk things out. I’m sure we can work past this mess. I love you forever!” I just deleted the message and called the phone company and had her blocked.

Now He Wants a Family

3 year ago, my husband Shane and I welcomed a beautiful baby boy named Tyler. We were young, both just 19, but everything was so perfect in the beginning and I was so happy to be starting our family. Then, out of nowhere, when Tyler was ariund 9 months old, Shane told me that he wanted a divorce. I honestly didn’t belive him. he had been known to be a prankster and I figured it was so sort of joke. Just the night before we had cuddled up together and watched movies. We were so in love. He left a few weeks later and after a long fight, our divorce was finalized. I was just so blind-sided and hurt, and so so angry. Here I am left to be a full-time, single mother to our son while he takes off, free to do what he wants. Shane and I worked out a custody agreement, where he would pay child support and spend a few week nights every week and every other weekend with Tyler. It worked as best as it could, but we ended up having so many fights because I wanted an explanation he refused to give. He owed it to us to try to work on things. He had just abandoned his family using the piss-poor excuse that he fell out of love and wasn’t ready for marriage. He said that the whole reason he went through with it was because I was pregnant and he wanted to give our son a family, but he could never give a good reason for why he just up and quit on us.

2 months ago I started hearing rumors that Shane had a girlfriend. Apparently, he had been dating this girl whom he never mentioned for months, and she had recently moved in with him. My first question was whether or not Tyler had ever been around her. He said he had spent time with her before and I flipped! There is some girl I don’t even know with my son?! I don’t think so! I told him that she was not allowed around my son, so she would have to leave whenever Tyler was over. He goes off about how I can’t run his life and how his new b!tch can be around if he wants her to be. Then he said something that cut so deep: “I’m thinking about asking her to marry me, so she is going to be a part of Ty’s life….. Accept it and get over it!” Like hell he was going to abandon us and then go play family with the next girl! I went down to the courthouse the next day and got the paperwork to file for full custody. My son needed stability, not some guy who was going to bounce around on him and have women coming and going in his life. I also made the decision to move from California to Arizona. I have a lot of family out there and can get a transfer with my job. I want Tyler to have a good life, full of people that love him, not just want him to be part of their little “family” game. My kid isn’t a toy, so I’m not going to allow the sperm donor or his chick to play house with him!

I Was the Other Girl?

When I met Jason, he was dating Karen, and they had all sorts of trouble. She kept saying she was pregnant so he wouldn’t break up with her, they fought publicly (and loudly), and it ended with her dating someone else, but keeping Jason as the ‘other’ man and almost rubbing it in his face. and Jason was ok with it.

Well, my junior year of college, after knowing him for 4 years, he asks me out. I tell him, “no. you’re still Karen’s on the side thing, and I don’t do that shit.” so, shock, he tells her it’s over. I know he did, because she texted ME screaming about how I was in the way, and eventually just saying “good luck.”

We dated 9 months. I got him into my theatre company, and helped him find a day job. He says he wants to propose, and is saving up for a ring. I’m freakin’ over the moon. After the season, he dumps me, telling me “I just don’t feel that way about you anymore”, but telling everyone else that I was begging him to stay, that I was claiming to be pregnant. Now, I may have begged a bit (I was young), but I physically cannot have children. I even had told him so years before, and we had talked about adopting someday.M y closest friends and a few of our mutual friends knew this, and told me what was up. Wen I confronted him on why he was telling people this, he said, and I quote, “stop lying, Karen! this stuff won’t work!”

That was the day I just cut off contact. I graduated, took a year to just be single and learn about me. I go to rejoin my theatre company, and find I’ve been ‘blacklisted’ because now Jason works there, and doesn’t want to work with me. The creative director tells me “we can’t have fake pregnancies here.” That is drama that can’t be allowed.” I am so furious, I shove my ob/gyn’s card into the director’s hand, and say, “I can’t fucking GET pregnant.” and storm out. I get a call 2 months later telling me they fired Jason, and asking me to rejoin the company, but I had already found another one to work with.

Slowly, mutual friends start contacting me, saying hi, asking me how I’m doing. Several of them tell me that Jason has been talking about me. A few of them even ask about the pregnancy.

Fast forward two years, and I get a message: it’s his new girlfriend, who tracked me down through members of my former theatre company, and she’s asking if he ever confused me for Karen. and she’s really, really upset. I tell her that i think the answer is yes, and explain the break up. She says she’s been trying to get jason to get help, since he called her Karen several times while they were fighting.

I told her to get out, and left it at that. apparently, EVERY girl is Karen. as far as I know, he and karen haven’t spoken since about a year after we broke up, when they had a huge blow up at a convention we all ended up at (unintentionally). It’s been 5 years now, and I still get reminded by mutual friends about how ‘crazy’ Jason was back then. Funnily enough, no one seems to hang out with him anymore…

How She Was Dumped

Short and sweet? Hell no! When you only get to read one breakup a day it’s gotta be crammed with juicy details!
I am going to be un-apologetically thorough, but relevant.

I had been more or less happily married for 6 years and had two beautiful girls when my husband’s father passed away from lung cancer suddenly.
My husband didn’t really deal with his grief from losing his only parent; he took his 2 weeks of bereavement leave and basically played video games and spent time with our kids and I.
He went back to work, and in the next couple of months he started to get a little distant and “weird”. Picking fights, criticizing my weight, how the house was always cluttered. Complaining that I “never let him pick anything” when we went grocery shopping of all things was a recurring argument. I didn’t think it was a big deal when I got strawberry ice cream instead of rocky road for example. His work provided a literal buffet 24/7 so anytime he wasn’t home he could literally eat anything he wanted…

Looking back now, it wasn’t surprising that he started caring about a female friend from work a little too much while he refused to address his grief properly. When I caught a flu bug from taking care of him that laid me out for about 3 weeks it wasn’t hard for her to look a lot more appealing than a sick, crabby wife who was worn down from being home with little kids 24/7.

One day, he left the house to go “get an estimate on new car tires”, and when he came home he confessed within 2 hours that he sneaked out to go on a date with this woman whom he kissed goodbye and told he loved. It turned out that every time he took the kids to the park so I could rest at home he had been calling her while they played.

Well, I was pretty shocked considering that it seemed like just weeks before that he regularly said things like I was the “most wonderful woman in the world”, and “he loved me more than anything”.

When I stopped sobbing and yelling in disbelief I gave him my best right hook… then I cried some more. He promised to try to work it out with me “for the kids” and cut communication with her while we went to counseling, had more date nights. He would get angry at me when I reached out to friends in pain to talk through what I was going through because he said I was “airing our dirty laundry”. I refused to apologize. As it turns out, he never stopped talking to her, and was b!tching me out over HIS guilty conscience. He’d call her and delete his history, and they would have long talks over lunch together, breaks, and walking her to her car at the end of the shift complete with hugs and “I love yous” exchanged.

She put on a brave face for him and told him she wanted him to take his time “for the sake of the kids”, then call him and say she was having “panic attacks from the stress of not being with him.” I talked to her in person and explained our history and relationship and to please give us this chance to save our marriage and leave him alone (amazing since I wanted to shatter her teeth and run over her with my car and feed her remains to wild dogs at the time.) She replied she would let him do what he wanted– she didn’t feel guilty since he was “unhappy” and she “tried to stay away when she had a crush on him already out of respect.”

We struggled through my birthday (we had drive through burgers. I wasn’t going to make him go through the motions of blowing cash on a big night out we would both be miserable faking.)

Finally when we took the kids to the zoo and he kept referring to it as “one last happy family outing” over and over, on the car ride home I demanded he decide right then, his family or her– because I was sick of trying to compete with someone who could never do anything wrong when I caught sh!t for leaving my dirty clothes in the bathroom.
He paused for a second, and then said “Her.” I shrugged my way out of my stuck wedding band and handed it to him right there in the car.

He moved out his stuff that weekend. The kids didn’t understand why daddy was leaving and cried and cried. He said they would come visit him next week.
He moved his things into her house and that’s where my kids went to have their first sleep over to “visit daddy”. She kept telling my girls that her kids and mine “were all sisters now, isn’t that cool!” They came back after playing all weekend, and being babysat by a stranger one night so Dad and girlfriend could go out– to add insult to injury they sent home hand me down clothes for my youngest, and a bike with broken training wheels. It was like twisting the knife every time one of the other dads in our complex would try to help her fix that damn thing. My life felt like a broken, used bike.

I celebrated my three year old’s birthday, just me, the two kids, a homemade cake, and a couple toys from the dollar store. After about a month of living in the apartment and being harassed about “when I was going to get a job” every time he called the kids, my mother invited me to move in with her 20 hours away, and I accepted since I was afraid how I was going to make it on my own, and desperately needed a new start. I was loading my things up on a truck on my seventh wedding anniversary.

About two months later, I was working on getting my new life together. Kids had started school, and after a lot of prayer and introspection I was settled on moving forward, working again, going back to school etc. while I waited for the divorce to come through.

Then my husband started instant messaging me. I assumed he had some business to discuss about the kids, but no, he wanted to be “friends again”. I told him to piss off. You don’t treat someone who was faithful to you for all those years like that and expect her to be happy for your new adulterous living arrangement and the redhead that made it all possible.
He persisted and I decided to be civil one night when I had a couple mixed drinks at home after the kids were in bed. He said he was sorry it happened the way it did and we pretty much talked about the kid’s school and video games and said good night.

A few weeks later, he dropped a bomb. Apparently, he had learned that his girlfriend basically wasn’t the person she said she was. They were having some kind of discussion about abortion of all things, and it came out accidentally that she lied about her prior opinion on the subject. It was like a cloud had lifted. As he peeled away the veneer of the woman he lived with for 3 months, he came to understand that she had told him what she thought he wanted to hear to “get him to like her”– Where she said she had been lonely since her marriage ended, she had had many boyfriends and a long standing “f*ck buddy” she was still hanging out with even after her she made it official with her poached man.
Her politics, her religious beliefs, her bra size, her taste in music, and even her sexual likes and dislikes turned out to be gross exaggerations.

He realized he made a big mistake. He said if I still lived there he’d move back in that day. “Well, sucks for you that I don’t. You’ll just have to figure something out.”
That week my cell phone broke and I didn’t have the money to replace it. I let him know and he went and got a new cell plan “so he could talk to the kids”. He got two phones, and I discovered he kept his new one a secret from his girlfriend. He started calling and texting me every time she wasn’t around. He made plans to move down and be near the kids. She called in to work for 4 days because of her “depression” over it. She suggested a long distance relationship and he said he’d think about it (he listed everything of value he owned on craigslist to raise money to see me and the kids again behind her back.) She told him she thought she was pregnant.
He waited for the pregnancy test.

He told me that if she was pregnant he would have to stay because there was no way he’d let her raise his child with her manipulation games and crazy family, and the worry was killing him that he would be trapped in the worst mistake of his life.
Negative.

She tested again in 2 weeks.
Negative.
She said “well, I guess it’s over then.”
“Yes it is” he said.
When he called me with the news, I agreed to let him try to win me back. I was tired of burying how much I missed him.

The next day she came home to a hole in the living room. He sold the flat screen TV he moved from our house to hers. She b!tched and b!tched about how she gave away her old sh!tty TV to make room for it. He calmly told her the next day was his last at his job- he was driving down to see his kids. She asked to come with him, he told her flat out; No, she wasn’t invited.
She went shopping and bought him a toiletries bag for his trip, and framed a photo of her and HER two kids for him to bring so he “didn’t forget his family”. He gave her kids a couple of small presents and told them that they were great kids and his leaving had nothing to do with them, but he had to be responsible and be with his own children that missed him.

He spent the money he raised on a plane ticket for me, he picked me up at the airport that very night and we drove all the way to my house, talking out our problems for 3 days on the scenic route. She had no idea that the man she cheated to get had gone behind her back to reconcile with his wife for weeks, telling me he loved me and was sorry every night before he went to sleep if I answered the phone or not while he developed “insomnia” and refused to sleep in her bed while she was in it.
That photo she gave him got thrown out the window at 65 mph on a lonely desert highway somewhere in Nevada.
She mailed him a stuffed toy that said “I love you” and he wrote “return to sender” on it after resealing the box.

All of that happened 4 years ago now. Mike dedicated every day of his life to proving to me how I was the best thing in his life that had ever happened to him, and that he would never f*ck it up again by being such a dumbass to think ANYone on earth could possibly be a better mate to him than me.
Neither of us are perfect, but we found that we really are perfect for each other.
He changed careers to one he found more fulfilling. We had another daughter. Developed new hobbies together, bought our first home, and are now expecting our son. We have moved on. Whenever the topic comes up he wonders what in the hell came over him.
Normally, “once a cheater, always a cheater” is true. I don’t advise every wife of a man who steps out on her to forgive.
But you know, sometimes even really good men make mistakes. And if he learns from them, it only makes him a better one.
Story so uplifting it must be wishful thinking?
Not really. If no one could take a bushel of sh!t and then create a happily ever after after the fact, no one would bother with the whole affair of chasing a lasting love.

What made you think he wouldn’t cheat on you?

My story has been replayed many times by wives of doctors and lawyers. I was a nursing student. Met James just before graduation he was in his 2nd year of premed. I had an apartment he lived in the dorms. I graduated and got a good job, we dated and in the fall he moved in, after living together for 8 months, we get married. I was the sole source of income, he got student loans to finish undergrad.

He got accepted to med school in another city, we move. 16 months later and we have a new baby son (I worked till 1 week before he was born). We of course moved to a bigger apartment and my mother comes and stays with us for extended times to baby sit, while I work as I am the only income. 16 months later we have a baby girl. 6 months later he graduates and does his residency, the income is ok, not great, I still work. We buy a modest house and finally get new cars. I think things are going good, residency did suck, long hours, bad days, kids are growing up. After residency James joins a surgical group even farther from my home. I am a good wife and follow him. I keep working, thank god. The kids and I plan a mini vacation to see my mom and dad, who now live a thousand miles away. James said he couldn’t get off, so we go alone, we get to the airport and find out, flight has been cancelled. So we drive home to surprise dad, it was a surprise alright I find a strange car in our garage and find James and “Elaine” a nurse in his office, in our hot tub, naked. I don’t make a scene but get the kids to their rooms then explode. The outcome is a divorce, after finding out this had been going on for over a year.

Since that time James moved to another city and I have reconciled myself to being a single parent and sitting in the divorced section of the sporting events,school plays etc, and explaining to them why their daddy can’t come to watch them. James and I have kept in contac t(phone and emails, I am still angry but try to be civil for our kids) and the children visit him for a month over every summer (he has a large house with a pool). He married “Elaine” and they have a 1 year old. This spring I email James to find out when the kids could visit but got no response and after several tries I call his home phone, Elaine answered and I asked for James she said he wasn’t there, I told her to have him call me. I called back 4 days later and spoke to Elaine she again told me he wasn’t there. After I explained why I called she began to cry and told me that she had caught him having an affair, she went on and on about how she didn’t think he would do that to her and how violated she felt, and that he had a 1 year old to think about. I finally lost it and said “The SOB cheated on me with you, did you think you were that special that he wouldn’t do the same thing to you? You had better check your fricken ego. I couldn’t be happier for you than I am right now” She hung up and neither James or Elaine will answer my calls, I guess the kids will be going to Grandma’s house for the summer.

My Sister Is Psychopathic

It all started about 7 years ago, I had been married to Jason for 2 years and we had a newborn son. My middle sister moved in to go to the polytech in our city and help out with the baby.
My marriage wasn’t going too well, my husband had mental issues and I couldn’t help him with them, it was getting really bad and I had the baby to look after. I kicked Jason out after one night of him screaming and ranting and he left for two weeks to live with his mother.
One night sitting in the lounge I heard someone outside the house. It was 1 am and there were trying to get in. I was terrified and called the police. They said they were on their way. I looked out the window and it was Jason! I opened the window to ask him what he wanted and he tried to pull me out by my throat. He had never been violent before, but could be intimidating. The police arrived but refused to take him away as his name was on the lease too. Me, my son and my sister Zoe left for the Woman’s Refuge, and Jason stayed.
The next day we went back to the house as Jason was institutionalised. The whole house was completely trashed, every window was shards on the floor, all of our possessions smashed, fridge upside down. My baby was vomiting every 20 mins. I later learnt that this is what happens when baby gets anxious.

Anyway, after two weeks or so of Jason showing up and being threatening (and knowing the police wouldn’t remove him), I decided to leave and move a few hours away to the town where my Father lives as he had a property for us. My baby and Zoe and I left one day with what we could fit in the car. After about a year and a house move, it was coming up to Christmas when I got a text from Jason saying he had been sleeping with Zoe. My husband and sister had been sleeping together in my house ever since she moved in to go to polytech and help out. I confronted Zoe but she lied and said it wasn’t true. I knew it was, Zoe had always been a sneak and jealous. I took my son on a holiday back to our city while I thought of what to do.

While I was gone Zoe moved a bunch of nazi skinheads into our home and had them threaten me not to come back and get my belongings. I went to the police here, and rung the police down there but no-one would help us. We were living back in the refuge. Zoe, Jason and the skinheads were texting me night and day. Very abusive. They killed my cat and she gave away/sold/threw out everything me and my son owned. I found it impossible to get help. The Refuge did everything it could. Zoe continued harassing and stalking me for four years. She was very clever at it, always getting my number if I changed it or my new address if I moved. I had a nervous breakdown.She knew all my details, so she would do things like ring the power company and get my power switched off, or tell a gang girl that I had slept with her ‘man’ so I would end up with girls on my doorstep screaming that they would kill me, she would ring child protection and try and have my son taken off me. It happened so often that they said they would have her charged for wasting their time. Zoe didn’t care, she just started ringing anon.

It was constant and unending terror. I didn’t know what would happen next or when. I was constantly scared. I began to think that to make it stop one of us would have to die, I saw no other way, it had been years and I had called the police many times but she was very clever at not looking guilty and they didn’t know what to do.
I decided to put a stop to it once and for all. I gathered evidence of everything, I got people who had witnessed anything to write me letters stating it, I made sure that if anything new happened I had witnesses and then I made an apt with a lawyer. I eventually got a protection order and if Zoe breaks it she will go to prison. The judge was incredulous that it had gone on for so long and we had not been helped. Zoe still tries every now and then to stalk me but she is scared of prison. I have heard that she has done this to other people since then. I am relieved to be free. It’s taken a long time to get over the stress and breakdown from all of this.
I guess I wasn’t dumped, and I’m sorry that my story doesn’t really fit here. I do feel like I was dumped on.Thanks for reading, it helps to tell what happened.